Live from North Hollywood, it’s SNL FYC!
On Monday, the Season 51 cast of Saturday Night Live — Tommy Brennan, Andrew Dismukes, Chloe Fineman, Marcello Hernández, James Austin Johnson, Ben Marshall, Ashley Padilla, Kam Patterson, Sarah Sherman, Veronika Slowikowska, Kenan Thompson, and Bowen Yang — gathered for a rowdy For Your Consideration Q&A at the Television Academy’s Saban Media Center. (Missing in action were Michael Che, Colin Jost, Mikey Day, Jeremy Culhane, and Jane Wickline.)
Many Saturday Night Live performers are receiving Emmy buzz for their work this year, including Yang, a five-time nominee who left the series in December.
“Yes, everyone, I’m FYC eligible!” Yang told the crowd. The podcaster and actor still “can’t believe” that his last episode featured guest host Ariana Grande and musical guest Cher. “It was so crazy, because those are two comedians, I feel like we can all agree. Cher’s a literal sketch comedian. Ari went through the whole Nickelodeon developmental thing. I can’t believe that was the fortuitous thing.”
Thompson, who won an Emmy in 2018 for co-writing the SNL song “Come Back, Barack,” described his 23-year tenure (and counting) as “surreal.” And he has no plans of stopping now.
“We have a front-row seat to some of the greatest comedic minds in the world,” he explained. “The show recreates itself every single week, and you really have no choice but to go along with it. The rotating influx of talent — writers and cast — allows for new ideas, new friendships, new collabs to form, and that keeps it pushing through time. I’m a witness to how the machine works. It’s not rocket science, they just hire whoever’s the greatest and most available. [We] paint a new canvas every single week. It’s just a wild experience. I don’t know where all the time went. I’m beyond grateful to have been there for even one season, let alone stressing ourselves, week after week after week, for 20 years.”
Sophomore cast member Padilla, arguably the breakout star of Season 51, revealed, “I mainly just focus on what’s funny for me and what’s making me laugh, and the rest is not up to me. I’m trying to be great at [the table read], and if it gets in, I’m like, ‘Really?’ and it’s always sort of a shock.”
As it turns out, Padilla came up with the recurring Weekend Update sketch with Dismukes titled “Two People Who Just Hooked Up.” “Ashley had the idea and brought it to me,” Dismukes said, “and I was following what she did. She steered that ship, and I was like, ‘F–k yeah, this is a gift.'” They didn’t have to do any sort of rehearsal, because, “We’re just f–king pros,” he joked.
One of Hernández’s newest characters is Mr. Fronzi, a male teacher that’s based on one of his real-life female school teachers. “I guess it’s up to the person that you’re making fun of to decide if it’s bad or not,” the actor chuckled. “But the teacher, Miss Fernandez, at my school, everyone did her every year, so she was used to it. I tried to make it a man and do it a little different, so she wouldn’t feel bad. I told her I was doing it, and she called me, and she goes, ‘Marcello, don’t forget the limp.’ So now you know who she is.”
Sherman, who just completed her fifth season on Saturday Night Live, is known for her various Weekend Update segments where she antagonizes Jost. Her ultimate goal? To “find out where he sleeps,” and “do something crazy to him.” As her co-stars reacted to her pretend threat, she innocently asked, “Do you guys know where he lives?”
Characters like Drunk Raccoon are usually the result of Sherman writing “like eight sketches for table read,” but none of them making the show. “By Friday everybody feels bad for me, so like, ‘We should throw her a bone and let her go on Update. What if she played a crazy animal?’ Sometimes a lot of those pieces don’t get written until Friday, and so by Saturday they’re really not figured out until the costume department puts me in a crazy little outfit.”
The 12 cast members played a superlatives game that involved ribbing each other for the audience’s enjoyment. Case in point: Johnson claimed Fineman was the most likely to break in sketches because, “She has no decorum. She is front-row, just enjoying the show.”
Fineman fired back, “I will say, I play your wife a lot, and this year you were in your underpants a lot. Not that that’s funny, but …”
“No, it’s funny. It’s funny that a guy like me would look like that,” Johnson deadpanned. The actor also entertained the crowd by occasionally shouting “Biden!” in his iconic Donald Trump voice.
According to Marshall, the most devilish person on the cast is Padilla, because, “She didn’t tell me that she was gonna put a bunch of mashed potatoes on my face in the sketch we did with Olivia Rodrigo, so that takes the cake for me.”
Hernández went after the absent Day by calling him “an agent of chaos,” adding, “He’s been there for a long time, and he doesn’t care, and he’ll get in your face in a way that’s wrong, and he’ll ignore the cards, and he’ll just say whatever.”
Newbie Patterson was named the person most likely to drop an F-bomb on live television. “Wait a minute!” he shouted in defense. He then conceded, “I like to say ‘f–k.’ It’s a good word. Wish we could do it. That would be pretty fun for me.”
Johnson thought that Padilla would be the likeliest cast member to win an Oscar before winning an Emmy. “She’s just a really great actor,” he stated. “I think she approaches comedy with real acting, which is impressive to see.”
“I’m gonna cry,” she responded. Padilla’s personal answer was Yang, because, “You’re the one that I see walking on that stage, grabbing that little gold man.”
Now that Yang is no longer on the show, he is able to watch it as a fan. “I am in awe, and I go, ‘Holy s–t, these people are doing this with no safety net,'” he declared. “They are doing something incredibly difficult on a weekly basis with a cadence where they get to show all of you, and me now, how much they improve at the skill. I really hope everyone considers that it is very hard to do this, especially now [when comedy] is in very short supply.” He concluded, “Thank you all for coming to my TED Talk!”
Following a clip reel featuring many of the best moments from the 2025-26 season, the SNL stars hobnobbed with hundreds of TV Academy voters while in the shadow of an enormous Emmy statue. It was a perfect atmosphere for the winningest series in Emmy history, at 113 trophies and counting. Variety‘s Clayton Davis hosted the Q&A.
The 2026 Emmys nominations will be announced July 8.
